


Secretary

by FuchsiaMae



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Period-Typical Sexism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-22
Updated: 2017-02-22
Packaged: 2019-08-22 20:03:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16604597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FuchsiaMae/pseuds/FuchsiaMae
Summary: Her greatest power is being underestimated.(Originally posted to Tumblr 2/22/17)





	Secretary

“Why don’t you get us some coffee, sweetheart? This doesn’t concern you.”

Her blood boiled.

“Yeah, this is boring old business talk. Don’t worry your pretty head about it.”

Her fingernails dug deep into her palms.

“Oh, she’s just a secretary, let her stay. She won’t understand a thing anyway.” 

She grit her teeth like a beast in a muzzle. And she smiled.

Just a secretary. Just an empty-headed little woman, too stupid to follow the big men’s talk, forever ignorant of the machinations around her. Anything she might say was a cutesy quip, earning a pat on the head or a swat on the ass. No intelligence here. She was a coffeepot with tits.

She seethed in silence as the meeting wore on. The men laughed and drank. She poured them more whiskey, and bit her tongue as they peered down her blouse.

Never mind that she worked in tandem with the man upstairs himself, at the heart of the action, her finger on the pulse at all times. Never mind that she’d earned his ear and his trust. Never mind that he called her the backbone of this place, because of all people, impossible Cave Johnson knew her value best. Never mind that she knew more about Aperture Science than any of them ever would, that every memo and statistic had to cross her desk, that if she could just get these men alone with a turret or a test chamber for  _five minutes_  –

But no. No, she was a secretary. ( _"Assistant,”_ she bit back the correction a hundred times a day.) All she did was push paper. (Which she did, often. Memos, lab reports, accounting books, legal forms. Every piece of the ceo’s correspondence. Unimportant things like that.) She was nothing but a pawn, blissfully unaware of the rest of the game. She was an innocent, only following orders. Too stupid to understand what they meant.

She smiled, and smiled, and bit the inside of her cheek til it bled.

But she was too savvy to blow her cover. She used the disguise to her advantage. She played the part. And with every condescending word, she made a list of lives to ruin.


End file.
